I dunno, as bad as EA is to consumers, I hate Activision far worse for their treatment of their employees.

I can choose not to buy shit. It is my freedom to not purchase stuff from EA. Their employees have no such luxury. It's why I, and many others, boycotted EA years ago and why their change convinced me to start buying their games again. Activision is the new EA, but gamers are so self-centered they don't give a shit. You'd find worse conditions only in Chinese/Indian sweatshops.

It's possible they don't know about Activision's working conditions. I know people make fun of Activision for many things, but I haven't heard anything about their workspace.

All I personally know of EA (they have 2-3 studios in Vancouver) isn't all that positive - long hours and many, many layoffs - but those seem to be the norm these days for ANY game company.

Yeah, that's kind of the problem with the game industry in general, and it probably doesn't help at all when companies like EA buy those like Bioware that do treat their employees well (I'd be VERY curious to know if that's still the case anyway or not). Still, if employee treatment is shit from both than EA definitely gets the nod because at least Activision's trying to be consumer friendly, even though the way they handle business can be abhorrent and also result in products I don't care about.

First off, frequent layoffs are a norm for programmers and any form of computer science/engineering these days, apparently. From what I've heard, a few years ago an EE graduate could find five to seven job offers in a year. Nowadays they're lucky if they find one.

Secondly, Activision's handling of the former Infinity Ward heads says everything that needs to be said about them. They treat their employees like shit, which is why I will never buy anything from them.

Well, we don't know the full story behind IW. It could be that Activision were assholes, or that these guys really are no where as innocent as they like to claim, or (most likely I think) it's somewhere in between.

Truth be told, you could probably find a more noble cause for a boycott. Computer engineers aren't exactly what Id classify as "unfortunate". Even if they get the axe, there's plenty of good jobs outside of the gaming industry. Not that I think you should buy Activision crap if you don't want to, but speaking as someone who's on their merry way to graduating as an engineer in computer science, Id like to think that I have quite a few options ahead of me, and from what I've seen on the job market, it really doesn't look like there's a lack of jobs for programmers.

« Last Edit: April 04, 2012, 05:51:17 PM by Maxximum »

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The majority of my family is in the engineering industry. This has nothing to do with nobility - and believe me, what I said above is accurate, especially since, as I said, lots of friends/family in the industry.

And just because I boycott because of low standards of employee treatment, doesn't mean I don't have the time to lobby for or promote other causes. This is just one of many.

I tried to expand a bit on my stance, not sure if your post was in before my edit though. That's fair enough, I just never really saw computer engineers being put in the "unfortunate or mistreated" group before, caught me a bit by surprise.

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They have it better than some, on this I agree. It hits a bit closer to home for me since a lot of people I associate with are engineering/CS majors and have a hard enough time finding jobs already without corporations fucking them against the wall.

In general, though, I frown on any type of broad employee mistreatment (like WalMart, for instance, which is also why I never buy shit from there).

The majority of my family is in the engineering industry. This has nothing to do with nobility - and believe me, what I said above is accurate, especially since, as I said, lots of friends/family in the industry.

And just because I boycott because of low standards of employee treatment, doesn't mean I don't have the time to lobby for or promote other causes. This is just one of many.

I'm curious about the stats on CS/Engineering versus other fields on that (layoff rates/job security/etc). My friends and family have had the complete opposite experience. I'm not disputing what you are saying, just wondering if you know of any hard data/studies on it, I'd be curious to read them.

I tried to expand a bit on my stance, not sure if your post was in before my edit though. That's fair enough, I just never really saw computer engineers being put in the "unfortunate or mistreated" group before, caught me a bit by surprise.